Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Loudon County, Virginia, US, has an automated alert system, via Roam Secure, to "immediately contact you during a major crisis or emergency and also to keep you informed about other news and events in Loudoun County." recalcintranttoy pointed out these two alerts (visible at the time on the 'latest alerts' page but probably scrolled off by now):

2008-09-26 10:13 -- "Run as fast as you can here comes the gingerbread man."

2008-09-26 10:16 -- "please ignore the last alert. The gingerbread man melted in the rain."

( A pair of alerts issued by Loudon County, VA, US )

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Hmm. Lemme toss in an anchor so y'all can conveniently skip right to the more positive part even if you're already behind the cut-tag(s) ... I figure there'll be some folks who do want to hear how my yesterday went just because you haven't heard much from me lately and want to hear some reassuring indication that I'm not dead, and folks who really don't need to wade through somebody else's "I did this and then I did that and then ..." nattering.

Ugh. Yesterday: power failure just before the start of rush hour. I had a lot of 'state', mostly in browser windows ... ( babbling about restart issues )

The power failure did last long enough for [the proverbial 'them'] to hang stop signs over the (rather many) dark intersections, though I'm not certain when they did that, nor how effective it was. As I Twittered, early acoustical evidence (horns and screeching) suggested that a great many drivers had forgotten the proper behaviour when approaching an intersection with a dark traffic light (treat it as a four-way stop sign). When I called BGE to report the outage, the computer-voice said it was expected to be repaired by 18:00, and I had stuff to do outside the house, so I opened the freezer long enough to grab a couple of plastic jugs full of ice, and threw those in a cooler so that I could keep groceries cold even if I got home before power was restored without opening the fridge again, and went off to pick up a few things I needed. Which was how I found out how far (in one direction anyhow) the blackout reached. And the honking behind me when I stopped at temporarily-uncontrolled intersections supported my earlier hypothesis regarding other drivers' long-term memory.

When I left the house, there was a helicopter circling low nearby, making me wonder whether someone had caused the outage by crashing into a substation or something, but I didn't see anything like that visible from the route I took, and didn't get a chance to watch the local television news to see whether the whole thing was large enough to be mention-worthy or not.

( babbling about yesterday's to-do list )

I'd had a hunch that I should take a longer lens than my current default walking-around lens, and sure enough, there were birds to shoot. I missed the buzzard (I think) that was lazily gliding over route 40, because I was moving at the time and it was gone before I could get into a parking lot, but I spent a while getting smaller birds lit by the not-quite-setting-yet sun. And, of course, by the time I got home (to find the previously mentioned temporary stop signs, and restored electricity), I'd tried to fit too much into one day and had thoroughly worn myself out.

By the way, I saw rather a lot of McCain/Palin yard signs in Catonsville. I've heard others mention seeing very few McCain bumper stickers in Maryland compared to the number of Bush stickers the last two times around (I'd seen a few), but I found this cluster of yard signs, with a single house in that neighbourhood sporting an Obama/Biden yard sign.

Anyhow, I stayed functional long enough to get the groceries put away, get back online (except for the liveCD-booted box) despite one of the scavenged UPS units failing to function, and got the VCRs re-programmed before the stuff I wanted to watch came on, before I collapsed.

Alas, yesterday's efforts took their toll. ( pain (and a bad dream), how I'm doing today, plans(ish) ... )

A couple of more positive things so that this isn't all just "damn, I've had a difficult week":

Oddly enough -- or not -- the main thing I have managed to do in the past week is mostly learn a new programming language (JavaScript, which I'd been putting off looking at for a long time, but now have a need for). Maybe that's not so odd, because I could do it in small bits during brief periods of feeling well enough to think straight; periods I knew would be too short to squeeze in anything that needed to be done in longer chunks. Anyhow, the language is not really what I'd expected it to be -- I think I'll actually enjoy working in it. (Now if only I could learn human languages as easily as I do computer languages ... *sigh*) Also, the most unsurprising (and pleasant) thing about this process: the relevant O'Reilly book justgus37 dropped in my lap is very good. (Flanagan, David; JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, Fifth Edition; O'Reilly Media, Inc.; Sebastopol, CA, US; ISBN 978-0-596-10199-2))

And, the itty bitty item that was the thing that actually provoked me to bother to write an entry today instead of just making a short "rough week" comment later when apologizing for not having written anything in so long: This bit of epistomological humour pleases me.

Yeah, I had something really short to say, but felt like I needed to post a bunch of other stuff first to make up for being so absent lately. Hmm. Yeah, I probably do need that nap.

( A description of my Friday in the context of my week, with a digression about learning JavaScript, all to build up to the main point -- a link to a comic strip that amused me )

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